Cost of Following Him - Luke 9

Hello Team 242,

I hope everyone is starting off the new year in a meaningful way.  It was meant for me to post this on Christmas Eve (that's why it's about Luke 9...back-tracking a bit), but I completely failed.  Honestly, I knew and remembered the date that I was supposed to post this, but I just didn't do it because I was just so exhausted both physically and mentally coming out from the three-month-training and I want to maximize the time when I was at home for Christmas in Nevada to regroup myself and stay away from the Internet/computer.

On the very end of Luke 9, verses 57 through 62 describes the cost of following Jesus.  The past three months have been the most challenging time that I've ever when through in the 23 years of my life (I know this sounds silly...pretty sure that I'll face even more difficult situations than this) because this was the first time that I've ever felt loneliness.  I really enjoy doing things by myself.  I'm one of those people who really enjoy being away from people and take time to meditate on my thoughts.  I'm definitely not a people's person; I can be at times, but I don't prefer myself to be that way.

Training was very difficult because in addition to spending two months in Missouri and a month in Iowa by myself, there weren't anybody who I could directly relate to.  I've went to church on Sundays to meet God and experience the community over at those two places, but the community that I had over there, it was very difficult for me to relate to those people primarily due to age gaps.  In the beginning, I never knew it would be that difficult for me to relate to different people due age because even at work I do things with people who are much older than I am.  However, as I got more engraved with the community over there and started to share personal things with them, I could feel that "invisible gap" because our lives are in different stages and the things that we go through are very different in life.  With all this, I started to feel lonely.  As the days went by, I was so engraved in loneliness to the point where I couldn't focus on God, along with feeling physically exhausted from having 12-hours days every day.

Last year around this time, I made a two-year commitment to stay behind post-graduation, primarily because I wanted invest in couple of younger sisters who I was having close relationships with and be more involved in the community by serving the church.  However, as the new school year started and the real work life has finally begun, by being away from the community for three months due to training, I started to doubt God's purpose and vision.  When I first started praying to seek answers from God last year, God gave me answers through giving me financial stability by offering me a place to work and being able to develop closer relationships with sisters.  Despite all this, I was forced to be sent away for lengths of time.  I started asking questions such as "am I on the right path?  Is this truly the vision and conviction that I received from God?"

On the other hand, however, I learned something meaningful.  The three months that I was forced to be away from Ann Arbor and the community really showed me how I often underestimate the community that I have here in Ann Arbor.  In addition, I think I had a really good "preview" of the life that I'll be having if I would've left Ann Arbor right away after I graduate.  An older sister who I feel very close to mentioned to be before how it breaks her heart whenever she sees people leaving Ann Arbor as soon as they graduate and after some time later when she looks at their lives again, they're struggling and not following nor journeying out for God.  I honestly never knew what that meant until I spent this past three months away from my spiritual home.  My work schedule is really hectic and intense.  In fact, all of my travelling schedules are tentatively set for rest of 2013 and it will be really difficult for me to take off weeks at a time, especially in the summer for vacation, due to the new launch for the program that I'm working on.  But, if I have to go through all this so I can be with my spiritual family here in Ann Arbor and more invest my time and resources to God, I'll gladly suffer through it.

Sorry for the jumbled up thoughts and long texts.  I've never meant this to be a long post, just full of text but I guess it just ended up being like this, my apologies.  Anyhow, I hope all you wrap up this week successfully, and I'm very excited to be back in life group this upcoming week.  See you all soon :)